DISCLAIMER: Information and data in this page is provided without
any warrany. I'm not responsible for the code. For any question not directly
related to the installation method described below, please contact the author
(e.g. via SourceForge).
IDLE Syntax Related Improvements
This page contains files and instructions for installing Noam Raphael's
Syntax-Related improvements to IDLE.
The features are described in this
tracker item
If you have further installation details (e.g. for other versions of
python), mail them to me so I can
add them here (also, if you have a better place to host this, I'll be grateful
- this is only a temporary solution).
Installing current version of improved IDLE
Recently (7/5/05), I got this new version (thanks, Noam!).
This time it comes as a seperate library, so we get:
- Simpler installation.
- Keeps the original implementation, works as a seperate program.
- Not version specific. Should probably work all (>2.2?) versions.
Downsides are: larger size (still only 700k...), and harder to keep to date with cvs (well, most of us are
not IDLE developers, so would not mind...)
So, let's install:
- Download following file:
mydlelib.tar.gz
- Unpack it in your site-packages dir.
For Linux it's probably /usr/lib/python2.x/site-packages
or /usr/local/lib/python2.x/site-packages (you might need root).
For Windows it's probably something like C:\Python2x\Lib\site-packages.
Unpacking the file creates a new subfolder called mydlelib
- Run it! the new subfolder contains a file called idle.py (linux) or
idle.pyw (windows).
Type it on the commandline or just click it in your filebrowser. You should probably also make a shortcut
for it on your taskbar or desktop.
Installing (older version) as a patch for idlelib in Python-2.3.5
- DL & Open following tarball:
syntaxpatch_235.tar.gz
- Find your installation's idlelib directory (for Linux this is
either /usr/lib/python2.3/idlelib or
/usr/local/lib/python2.3/idlelib, for Window's it might be
something like C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib.
- Choose a directory for installing your new IDLE.
I suggest creating a new directory and adding it to your PYTHONPATH:
mkdir -p ~/lib/python2.3/idlelib
export PYTHONPATH=${HOME}/lib/python2.3:${PYTHONPATH}
(I don't remember the windows equivalent - please mailme if you know).
As an alternative: backup your original idlelib dir (from previous step),
and just skip the following step.
- Copy all files from your original idlelib dir to the newly generated dir
from previous step.
- Copy all files from the opened tarball in step 1, to your "new idlelib"
directory, replacing any files existing in that dir.
- start idle. enjoy.
Patching cvs version (older version)
- DL & Open following tarball:
syntaxpatch_cvs050609.tar.gz
- Go to dist/src/Lib/idlelib in your python cvs directory.
- Roll it back to patch's date: cvs update -D 2005-06-09
- Patch it: cat {opened_tarball_dir}/syn_cvs050609.diff | patch
- Copy the rest of the files: cp {opened_tarball_dir}/*.py .
- Update to current version: cvs update -A
By Amit Aronovitch, aronovitch@gmail.com